Although native cultures have always produced arts containing abstract elements, today's perception of abstract art dates back to 1910, when Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque invented cubism, which within half a decade, led to the pure abstract art created by Piet Mondrian and Russian styles such as constructivism and suprematism. While cubism and the styles that preceded it, such as post-impressionism, were partly based on native art that contained abstract elements (see for instance Picasso's black period), in cubism, for the first time in art history, artists began to paint abstract art as a result of a deliberate artistic and philosophical development. Halfway the 19th century philosophers had begun to doubt the sincerity and usefulness of classical art, with its emphasis on technique and its dependence of nature as a model to depict. At the same time the art of painting had reached a dead end in terms of inspiration and innovative thought. The impressionists were a fresh wind, but their emphasis on first impressions failed to convince men like Van Gogh, Gauguin and ultimately Picasso, who perceived impressionism as shallow and sought more powerful means of expression.

1980 - NOW : Postmodernism - artistic inability to innovate or lack of social acceptance of innovation?

The post-impressionists´ (such as Van Gogh and Gauguin) primary goal was to express their inner world and Gauguin would begin to paint from his imagination rather than to use nature as a model. Georges Braques had pioneered the technique of faceting an image, in order to capture the essence of an object, rather than the appearance, which would lead to cubism. While not able to reproduce the figurative function of Branques' technique of faceting, Picasso's way of faceting would become a stylistic means that led to almost pure abstraction, a process which would be completed by Mondrian and the Russian abstract artists. From there on the world of abstract art could be roughly divided into two directions:

- Geometric abstraction
- Painterly automatism
The first refers to a style that consists of the depiction of geometric objects: squares, rectangles, triangles, disks, etc.
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..... continued : The prime example of geometric abstraction is Piet Mondrian's neo-plasticism, a style that consists of rectangles painted in the three primary colors: red, yellow and blue. While geometric abstraction emphasizes the conceptual, intellectual side of art, painterly automatism is about emotionality and spontaneity. "Painterly" refers to a seemingly unfinished technique of painting, in which the brushstroke remains clearly visible and serves as a means of expression. "Automatism" refers to the intuitive and spontaneous aspect of painting, as if the paint is applied without thinking. During the 1940s and after WWII, painterly automatism became the dominant approach to abstract art in the form of abstract expressionism and art informel.

Freedom of abstract art

How free can abstract art be, that is the question. As abstract expressionists felt limited by the abstract-geometric and cubistic bounds, abstract paintings began to gain expression and at the same time "lose shape". Abstract paintings by Jackson Pollock demonstrate how abstract expressionism moved towards
the production of paintings without conscious control. How effective is abstract art when the emphasis on form is reduced, or absent? Is there a trade-off between expression and form? These are interesting questions about paintings which should transcend the "its all just a matter of taste" platitudes.

The creation of abstract expressionism in America had been preceded in the mid 40's by Europeans like Wolfgang Schulze (aka "Wols"). "Wolfgang Schulze was the spiritual father of 'Tachism' (after the French tache = stain, scratch) and in a broader sense of art informel, the style of wild gestures" and 'action painting', a rebellion against the formalism of abstract codes, that reintroduced 'feeling' in art, by freely applying the paint, dripping and splashing" (after "Kunst van de 20e eeuw" - Ruhrberg, Schneckenburg, Fricke, Honnef - Taschen Verlag GmbH).Contemporary paintings no longer reflect a contraposition
between abstract art and figurative art, but these styles either come together in paintings by contemporary artists, or exist side by side in pure figurative paintings or pure abstract art paintings.